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As increasing number of people look to get healthier, save money and time and preserve the environment, it’s no surprise that Bike Share Schemes are growing in popularity around the world.

With traditional schemes doing well in many cities, more and more start-ups are bringing out dockless Bike Share Schemes in the hope to take advantage of the rising on-demand culture. It gives riders convenience, choice and transparency over the more traditional docked schemes.

With a free-flowing Bike Share Scheme, riders can use their smartphones to find, pay for and unlock bikes and leave the bike anywhere once they are done. It’s this level of simplicity that is making such schemes very popular.

In fact, in China, the most mature market for Bike Share Schemes, start-ups have had massive success entering the market, raising significant amount of funding and supplying vast amounts of bikes.

At the same time, the news in this market dominates around dockless bikes being stolen, damaged and left in an unsuitable place by their millions. For operators, they are constantly replacing bikes while cities and its citizens are seeing more cluttered bikes on their streets.

This raises the question; which schemes should cities adopt? Free-flowing Bike Share Schemes are a topic of heavy debate for many cities due to the problems they can create if it remains unmanaged. The solution for many companies was to supply more bikes to the market, which only added to the problem.

But operators are now becoming savvier. They are offering parking spaces, rewards for good riders and improved apps to track their bikes. This is a step in the right direction to tackling the problem. With dockless bikes being a good way to get people cycling, it would be wrong to completely rule out the free-flowing schemes.

Instead, operators should focus on how they can effectively manage existing resources to benefit themselves, the cyclists and cities. By effectively managing logistics, operators can remove bikes from overcrowded and unsuitable areas to supply it to areas that need them.

Through collecting and organising huge amounts of data available in cities, operators gain real insight into their schemes as well as the market. They gain cost efficiencies as they are not unnecessarily purchasing bikes and riders can trust that bikes are available when and where they need them.

At Stage Intelligence, we use close to infinite amount of data and Artificial Intelligence technology to offer a simple management process for Bike Share Schemes. By predicting demand and managing supply, operators see real benefits to their schemes.